Customer Reviews

Fedora Bible 2010 Edition: Featuring Fedora Linux 12

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The Fedora Bible is first and foremost an easy-to-follow hands-on guide for installing and using your own Linux system, but it also serves well as a gentle introduction to Linux system administration. The book doesn't get bogged down with lots of theory, but rather gets down to the nitty-gritty step-by-step details of installing Linux, using desktop applications, performing basic system administration tasks, setting up networking, and configuring different types of servers. Once you've set up your system, I recommend The Linux Administration Handbook for further details of system administration if you decide you want to know more.

This "bible" is a startup guide on a big lot of topics, from the beginnings (like installing the distro from the provided DVD) to some "advanced" ones, typically for server environments.

The first part (oriented to the desktop usage) is very well planned, and the authors present a good mix of applications needed for doing the most common end-user tasks. There are both GUI and command line utilities, and the exposition is very clear, though I'd like to read more personal opinions and impressions from the authors about the tools and their alternatives.

The second part is oriented to administrative tasks, networking and security; here the reader must be warned that most if not all of the considered topics deserve entire books to be used proficiently (or securely.) With that advice, this book can be a good start point or tutorial for people interested in these matters (I'd also suggest to see the RHCE curricula.)

Fortunately, this fat book (near of 1k pages) doesn't attempt to be an authorized reference for the total Linux/Fedora universe, so it is not filled with reference lists or tables easily found on the Internet. As stated in the preface, the book is all about "Learn-through-tasks".

Finally, don't forget to read the changelog of the latest Fedora release (currently v. 13) for updates.